CAI-NJ December 2021

LOOKING AHEAD ANGELA KAVANAUGH | CAI-NJ CHAPTER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

What a year! Happy December everyone! Where did the year go? At the chapter office, we were so busy fitting a full year of events into seven months that 2021 flew by. After a very long 14 months, we were able to safely come together again. In total, we hosted 16 networking events and 41 educational programs during 2021. We kicked the year off with our Welcome Back Party in May. In June we hosted our Annual Golf Outing at Forsgate Country Club and later that month celebrated our leaders in the industry at the Annual Awards Celebration at the Boathouse on Mercer Lake. We introduced a new event this August, the Ultimate Night Out, as we enjoyed an evening of baseball fun at Blue Claws Stadium. Also in August, many of our business partner members attended the Business Partner Essentials program where they earned their Educated Business Partner Distinction, allowing them to stand out among thousands of companies and profession- als who support common-interest communities. We joined the Keystone chapter in September for the Joint Networking Event at Lambertville Station where members of both chap- ters came together to network and later that month, we hosted the Annual Beach Party at Martell’s Tiki Bar in Point Pleasant. In October we were so pleased to be able to host the Pre-Conference Reception and Annual Conference & Expo at the Event Center at iPA, where over 165 exhib- itors met with our community association managers and homeowner leaders to showcase the latest industry trends while hosting three educational sessions throughout the day. We also presented an Alternative Dispute Resolution Training session where 20 CAI-NJ members learned how to mediate disputes and will be added to our list of mediators in order to provide mediations services to our members. This month, we will be ending a full year’s worth of events with our Annual Meeting for all those sitting on next year’s CAI-NJ committees, followed by another new event, the Annual Winter Break Party. Both events will take place on December 9th at the Grand Marquis in Old Bridge.

The F.A.S.T. Committee raised over $13,000 for Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Jersey with their events and to date have donated $54,684.28 to this vital charity. The Community Associations Political Action Committee (CA-PAC) started their fundraising year with the Top Golf event in Edison and the 9 and Nosh in September in addition to their virtual events, all raising money for our PAC. These funds are what allow our Legislative Action Committee to have a voice in Trenton, connecting with elected officials that can have a positive impact on our mem- bers living in common interest communities. The in-person events were rounded out by multiple vir- tual educational and networking programs such as the Women’s Leadership Retreat, a full week of programming, highlighting female leaders in our industry. Most virtual educational programming this year was recorded, includ- ing the LAC Updates, Wednesday Webinars and Lecture Series. These webinars can be found on our website in the webinar library at https://cainj.org/webinars/ I hope that you were able to join us and took advantage of all that CAI-NJ had to offer. Looking ahead to 2022. We have already placed 175 CAI-NJ members on our committees for 2022, the highest number of committee volunteers that the chapter has ever had. Plans are already underway for a full year of in-person networking events and educational programming while continuing to host virtual events and education as well. Please save these dates for the events that we have planned so far. • Annual Awards Celebration at the Event Center at iPA in Freehold – February 24th • Women’s Leadership Retreat at the Hyatt Regency in Princeton – April 6th • Annual Golf Outing at the Forsgate Country Club in Monroe – June 14th • F.A.S.T. Olympics — TBD CONT I NU E S ON PAGE 68

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